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Published: October 26th 2009
hey everyone!
ok so I have too much to talk about hahaha, I’ve been out of internet contact for a bit and not had enough time to write so I will keep it short but with it covering a long time it will be a novel.
Julia, Sheryl (Kiwis) and I headed back to krabi where Julia was flying home to NZ before hitting Canada. Sheryl is also thinking of coming for the Stampede now so we may have a party on our hands!
Bonnie, the other Kiwi, arrived later that day and the 3 of us went to a lovely market and chilled out for the evening before Sheryl and I left at 7am the next morning to MALAYSIA! yah! we had a nice long day of travelling from krabi to Langkawi in a mini bus. On the ferry over we met a Californian named Elliot who joined our lone wolf pack and headed with us to the gecko guesthouse where Nicole (A Swiss friend of Sheryl’s) was waiting for us.
langkawi was so cool. In our dorm room we had me, Nicole, Elliot and another guy named Joonas (who incidentally looks like a dictator in
training from his id so we called him Fidel). We all hung out and it was so much fun. Elliot, Sheryl and I met a lady who owned a bar in langkawi so we went on an adventure to find it. It was so small, more like a shack so we missed it the first time. What made it funny was when we walked in the guy at the bar was like, why are you here? How did you find out about this place? He was shocked that someone wanted to drink there. oh and when we wanted to buy beers for the walk home he said buy them in the mini mart because it was cheaper??! worst bar manager in the world hahaha. oh and we also had to jump out a window to go bathroom!
Our first day in langkawi was spent doing an island tour. It was really beautiful... but bloody hot. We went to the island of the pregnant maiden which is a fresh water lake in the middle of an island out to sea. We saw hundreds of cat fish and you could put your feet into the water and they would eat skin
off of you and tickle you crazy. Sheryl nearly started to cry because she was panicked so much about it but Nicole and myself would not let her leave until she conquered her fear. It was fun to sit down and watch a throng of fish fight over each other to get at your feet and then tickle them with their long whiskers and thrash violently whenever food was dropped in.
We also saw hawks feeding which was spectacular but raised many moral issues about feeding animals, animal dependency and maintaining ecotourism. The eagles took flight once boats appeared then streaked down to grab the food out of the water the boat men tossed in there.
We had a lovely swim at another beach and just relaxed for the rest of the day We saw a monkey attack a lady, steal her purse and open it then run off with the food inside. The poor lady had to get rescued by our group because her husband was covered in frightened children. That night there was a night market so we headed there for street food to stuffed our faces full!!! I ate more than everyone combined as I
haven’t been satisfied by dinners here as portion sizes are too small so I ate as much as humanly possible: 2 murtabak, fried noodles, chocolate cake, samoa, fish cakes, satay and a juice plus several other things...... I felt pretty sick after leaving and just died of a food induced coma that night.
In our hostel we then met a lovely couple from England (Elley and Dave) and another American (Heather) who all joined our wolf pack. We all hired scooters and went to the gondola and on a crazy bridge that obviously was a feat of engineering as it was at such odd angles and the support cables were done quite fancifully in a bowtie pattern. The bridge swayed a little in the wind and made many people visibly nervous. We left and went to see a lovely waterfall we were went for a swim to help combat the ever oppressive heat.
That night was Nicole’s bday so we drove to Mc Donald’s for the occasion and had a Birthday party. We went back to that shack bar and had some drinks then came home and stopped for late night vendor food. God I love food. Cheap
food and foreign food and Indian food. So GOOD!
The next day Nicole, Sheryl and myself left to the Cameron highlands. Our timing was not so ideal as we had to wait for 3 hrs in Kuala Kedah to get a bus, slightly hung over of course in the intense heat. While there, we tried some street vendor food called laksa. Quite possibly one of the worst things ever! It is a curry made of ground fish and shrimp paste. We all wanted to vomit and just ate north American food the rest of the night. I do not recommend it at all.
After getting the bus to Ipoh we just missed the last bus and ended up staying up from 1am to 7am in McDonalds waiting for the first bus of the day to the Cameron highlands. It was a long long night and we did not sleep for just over 24hrs. Needless to say when we arrived in Cameron highlands around 11am the next day, we were shattered.
In the Cameron highlands we stayed at this lovely hostel called Fathers. While there we met Nina, a Spanish lady, and will a Brit named Will. Together
we took the crazy public bus to boh tea plantation. The scenery was amazing!! Great green rolling hills and dense shrubbery with greens that would make your eyes pop.
The tea plantation was delightful and it had the nicest tea and we sat overlooking rolling green hills. We went on a shitty tour that was self guided then left. We didn’t know how we were getting home so we walked to a butterfly farm, held a snake (a whip snake, saw heaps of beetles, scorpions, toads, butterflies, bugs, rhino beetles and many lizards. Quite the little zoo. LITTLE being the operative word. Lisa Dockman would have lost it there. We walked a bit before flagging down the local bus to run home. In total we must have walked about 8km that day. Sweet.
Over these last couple of days we have tossed around ideas for what we want to do while here and on a whim and thought, hey why don’t we climb mt. kinabalu? So we are now in the midst of planning to climb this awesome mountain!!! It is roughly half the height of Everest and is a well defined path so maybe I will get
to experience altitude sickness!
We arrived in Teman Negara from the highlands, a Malaysian national park. It is beautiful place rather untouched by humans. We also had to deal with Sheryl’s massive leech phobia which was amusing nonetheless. We went for a jungle canopy walk which left us about 10 meters high and in the treetops then back to go caving where we saw bats (the most I have ever seen in my life), snakes, frogs and actually were crawling through tight spaces and getting nice and dirty. You can really see the difference in tours between a first world nation and here. There is next to no safety regulations or precautions except “Watch your head” and “do what I do.”
We got back and the guide showed us some native Malaysian face painting. The guide took a fancy to Nicole so Sheryl and I painted each other’s face. The guide also got us to spend a night in the jungle with him on a river bank in the middle of the jungle. We did a hike about 2km uphill to a water fall where we spent most of the day jumping off of it, swimming in the
pond and creeping behind the waterfall. We came back then waited for the sun to dip before starting the most vertical climb I have ever done almost 600m to a summit to watch the sunset. Sadly the clouds were not too great and so the sunset wasn’t to spectacular as it was mostly obscured. We climbed back in the dark, had dinner and spent the night looking at the stars, watching fireflies blink through the trees and slept under the stars until it started to rain. Then we crammed 4 people in a two person tent and slept the night away.
We left the next day on an epic trip of bus after bus to Cherating to surf but sadly there is no swell! We just have been relaxing and enjoying the beaches. We head to Kuala Lumpur soon and tossing up the idea of Kinabalu as we must do some research first.
I am sorry it has been so long but internet has either been quite expensive or rather unattainable. There was one point we couldn’t use it because the power had shut off to an area for an extended period of time. It really made me
appreciate how lucky we are living in Canada to have such luxuries and not need to worry about being without such amenities for as long as we were.
I have also been trying to get a phone interview with ConocoPhillips set up which has been a complete crazy mess. Basically it ended up with me changing my plans to go for the interview but then the interviewer who happens t be the head Geologist said that he had plenty of time to observe me from last summer and that he had confidence in my abilities which meant a lot to me and meant that we wouldn’t need a phone interview and I will find out if I get a position in a week or so. To have someone place so much trust in you especially from a work related standpoint really is a special thing and I feel quite lucky that I made an impression whether good or bad that basically let them wave the interview. So wish me the best of luck and with any luck I will be back at ConocoPhillips having twice as much fun and learning twice as much as I did last summer!
I want to hear from you guys too! I just put lots of picks up on facebook and have had lots put up of me so go check them out! Miss you all and can’t wait to see you come the new year!
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Monica Coulson
non-member comment
Howdy!
Just for all of Nick's friends reading his blog, from far and wide around the globe , Yes as long as you truly are a friend of Nick, as verified by the Grand Poomba himself, we welcome you to come to Calgary and partake of simple Canadian hospitality. So Christmas, New Years, Stampede, or whenever , guests ,and a party or two will be accomodated back home here in Calgary! Look like Brick is enjoying himself. A bit of a daredevil he is too! Nice to hear you love food!!! And have found cheap plentiful supplies!! I was worried you were starving yourself! Eat Drink and be Merry, for next summer you may be a professional working man!!!! Love you! Mommy